Designed for Good: Community Well-Being Oriented Online Databases for Youth - Community-Built Databases: Research and Development - page 303

requirement that the web space should be personalised for the users and allow them
to customise the web space according to their needs. This relates to the requirement
of presenting the information in a manner that is easy to understand and navigate.
Each user will have different prior knowledge and preferences that moderate the
perception of how well the information is presented and to accommodate for
diverse needs the web space should be presented differently for each user.
Moreover, the creation of a coherent identity is an important part of adolescence
[ 78 ]. Online role-play games are a good illustration of this concept where users are
able to create virtual identities and are encouraged by the social dynamics of the
virtual world to make their virtual identity stronger and “more appreciated” [ 11 ].
For the interface of a web space to enhance youth well-being, identities and what
they do (as described under interactivity) should be presented as an integral part of
the interface.
This means that youth users do not only personalise the web space in terms of
how it is presented to them, but can also contribute how the web space appears to
other users. This concept is well illustrated by popular sites such as MySpace where
it is apparent that the pages of different users differ significantly in both content
and design.
Moreover, governance is another important requirement that must be considered
in the construction of a youth-oriented community-built database. While all Internet
users are susceptible to governance issues in an online context, adolescents are
more at risk because of their still developing social, interpersonal, computer and life
skills. Adolescents regularly use the Internet to communicate through emails, social
networking sites and chat rooms. Wirth et al. [ 92 ] assert that while engaging in most
of these online activities takes little-to-no training for the adolescent user, fully
understanding safety threats, knowing how to effectively protect one's self from
these threats and having the motivation to do so require a greater level of under-
standing. Designing a web space or a community-built database that protects these
vulnerable users is discussed in more detail in the following sections.
12.7 YCD Framework
In order to support the design of community-driven databases, which can enhance
youth well-being, we propose a conceptual framework. This framework is informed
by the issues and design principles discussed above.
One important aspect we wish to consider is systems that are tailored to the
requirements of youth users and their well-being where concepts of community,
identity, database and data may slightly differ from traditional perspectives.
Youth use the Internet to multitask between various web spaces that catch their
attention and therefore often the data produced is conversation based rather than
ontology based [ 72 ]. For instance, while organisations can build up knowledge
bases in wikis or other forms of community-driven databases, youth users usu-
ally have a very diverse set of interests and motives that collide with the strict